EVE Fiction

I know a lot of people draw inspiration for the Caldari from the Shadowrun RPG setting. You can also take a look at some books like Neuromancer by William Gibson and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

I've always said that the Caldari State is a lot like Detroit. It's an industrial state ruled not by a government, but by a handful of mega corporations.

In Detroit, MI, the CEOs of GM, Ford, and Crysler have way more influence, power, and wealth than the mayors, representatives, or governor.

Also, just walking around the city will reveal that it has the same ruthless efficiency of the Caldari State, where buildings, transportation, and overall engineering of the society are built for function, not form. This was especially apparent after moving to Atlanta (and joining CCP): The streets here are a nightmare, a twisting labyrinth of nonsense, where half the roads are named "Peachtree." From the air, all of Michigan looks like a graph paper, an evenly-spaced grid of logic.

Hope that helps!

The Zaibatsu is arguably a real world inspiration for the Caldari State..

Came here to recommend Jennifer Government.

That being already recommended, I would suggest another one of Max Barry's works, 'Company'.

It's light reading but I think it does a pretty good job of turning the bland, corporate, yes-men dichotomy on it's head.

Go Max Barry.

With a few of the above examples, the issue is that civil authorities still exist, no matter how weak. In the Caldari State, there are NO civil authorities. Everything is corporate-run. Of course, you could interpret 'Caldari civil' = megacorporate. In which instance, the State is where the state (small s) is omnipresent. This may be interpreted as authoritarianism or totalitarianism, but it's more than likely the average Caldari do not feel oppressed at all. Cultural relativism and all that; as players, we probably approach the lore as 'Gallente' (Westerners where democracy is the unquestionable world standard). This means that most of us in the West may very well find the State to be an extremely un-nice place to be, but the Caldari people and culture are adapted to such a lifestyle.

In which instance, for day-to-day governance, the Caldari State has many similarities with philosophies in the contemporary People's Republic of China, which is meritocratic. NYTimes just published an article on 'meritocracy vs democracy' here...some key points...





There's also Chinese legalism worth thinking about, which is noted for having similarities with fascism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism (which are three ideologies we see to varying degrees in the State)

Finally, Francis Fukuyama briefly chatting about (starts at :35) India and China. In short, when China wants to do something like displace folk to build something that'll benefit the whole, they do it (just like the Caldari would). When India wants to as a democracy, they'll have protests and strikes (just like what would happen in the Fed).

But ofc it's not all or nothing. As people have pointed out, the State has Japanese elements (though naturally, Japan has been heavily influenced by China over the centuries). I just like to use the PRC as a tool to help illuminate how the State may approach everyday governing.